Will Miriam O’Reilly’s tribunal victory end years of ageism at the BBC? The
Corporation's veteran broadcaster John Simpson, 66, hopes so.

Broadcasting is largely an industry for the young. As you walk along the long, artificially lit corridors of Television Centre, there is a constant flow of men and women in their twenties and thirties, wearing casual clothes. Just occasionally you spot a man, or even more rarely a woman, with grey or even white hair. If you are on the elderly side yourself, a quick look passes between you. I've survived this far, the look says: how have you managed it?

Many of us oldies joke that the managers will hunt us down and cull us. Yet the people who usually are shown the way to the exit in a big broadcasting organisation like the BBC are the managers themselves, who rarely stay long into their fifties. Only two categories of people, by and large, survive beyond that: those on the technical side, and the on-screen talent.

For broadcasters, and primarily for the males among us, the situation is nothing like as dangerous as we like to present it. The BBC and ITV have always kept on a sizeable number of men beyond the age when most industries would have shown them the way out.

At present, as it happens, the screen is rather clogged with the elderly, especially in the field of news and current affairs: John Humphrys, Jon Snow, David Dimbleby and I are all of the bus-pass generation (currently defined as being born before April 1950), and Jeremy Paxman is only a month behind. Sir David Attenborough, at 84, shows that if you are good enough and held in sufficient affection and respect by your audience, you can keep going for another generation.

Of course a degree of ageism exists in the minds of broadcasting executives, because it's there in us all, but expressing ageist sentiments out loud has become unacceptable. Any organisation with a duty of care to its employees has to consider whether they are up to the job. At present, aged 66, I feel confident I am. Soon I shall be heading off to the farthest reaches of the Amazon, and I have complete confidence in my ability to keep up with the two younger people who will be with me while I'm there.

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Yet my age inevitably means I am under greater scrutiny. Not long ago a news executive, who has now left the BBC, wondered out loud whether I wasn't too old to be going undercover to Zimbabwe.

But physical and mental ability are one thing; looks are quite another. Because I am a man, no one asks if I have too many wrinkles, or will look acceptable with the sweat pouring down my lived-in face when I appear on camera in the jungle. That is simply not an issue.

A key moment in the ageism case that Miriam O'Reilly won last Tuesday against the BBC came when her legal representative, Heather Williams QC, pointed out that there was a clear disparity between the sexes in broadcasting. "Physical appearance," she said, "is an issue for women in a way that it is not for men."

And she went on: "In prime time, it is much more common to see men who are wrinkled or overweight or who, in one way or other, could not be described as physically attractive."

As someone who is wrinkled, overweight and unattractive myself, I have to agree.

Nowadays, the BBC largely seems to be run by bright, clear-minded women, and programmes like Newsnight have always welcomed women on screen regardless of their age. At the same time, as we well know, talented women in their forties and fifties have lost their on-screen jobs. Sometimes there have been other reasons; but in the case of Miriam O'Reilly, her sole crime was getting older; this, after all, is why the BBC made a handsome apology to her last week, and has paid her accordingly.

Still, if ageism affects women more than men, it hasn't left men unscathed. Back in 2008 my wife Dee Krüger Simpson, who is a television producer, came up with an idea for a series which the BBC immediately latched onto. She proposed that the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the round-the-world sailor Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and I would each take the others to his area of expertise.

I would take them to the Tora-Bora caves in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were still operating. Sir Ranulph would take us to the far north of Canada to man-haul sledges across the ice. Sir Robin would take us on a small boat around Cape Horn. The controller of BBC One liked the idea, and was prepared to put serious money behind it.

Then a crisis blew up, and he left. Another controller took over, and nothing was heard about our proposal for some time. Finally, in traditional BBC fashion, the word filtered down: "The controller doesn't think it fits the audience profile." That was BBC-speak for "These three old men will only interest older viewers, and we want to attract a much younger audience." In the end BBC Two took up the project, rather more cheaply. Its viewing figures were good, and apparently included large numbers of younger people.

Miriam O'Reilly's court victory means that controllers and programme bosses won't make this kind of snap judgement again so openly. And slighting references to the age or looks of broadcasters, male or female, will become as unacceptable as remarks about their ethnicity or sex. It was a landmark, and broadcasters, male and female, will benefit from it.

Not before time. Some years ago, a good friend and colleague of mine, with a particular reputation for thoughtfulness and accuracy, appeared on a news programme. He had turned 60, and wore a beard. The editor of the programme watched his performance, and was quoted by several people present as saying she didn't want to see that old man on her screen again. My friend left the staff of the BBC not long afterwards.

The former BBC One controller Jay Hunt, who was at the centre of the Miriam O'Reilly case, told the court that she "never considered the way somebody looks in the decision whether they appear on television. I would find it offensive." So would most of us. Jay Hunt, incidentally, was the executive who turned down our series with Sir Ranulph and Sir Robin.

Now, though, everything has changed. Jay Hunt has gone to Channel 4. The BBC, in the person of Alan Yentob, has apologised handsomely to Miriam O'Reilly, and has promised to talk to her about future work. As a result of her case, the anxiety that comes with wrinkles and greying hair will to some extent abate.

But there does have to be change. Keeping the same faces on television decade after decade can give continuity, and can even be comforting to viewers, who, like the nation as a whole, are getting older; but the broadcasting executives must be allowed to get rid of frontmen and women who can no longer cut the mustard.

Miriam O'Reilly's great achievement is that it will be far harder from now on for a single top executive to get rid of on-screen talent merely on the basis of a single, irreflective, flippant judgement.